Schneider Electric's Director of Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Software for Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China, said the company believes it will see much growth of its DCIM business in the APAC market.

Given the gloomy economic outlook in Europe and the US, Schneider Electric is now focusing on the region, Gay Chi Sen told Focus at the DatacenterDynamics Converged Singapore event last week.

“China, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore are all very key markets for our DCIM solutions,” Chi Sen said.

He said the rapid growth of DCIM adoption in APAC is mainly driven by the dramatic growth of the data center business, government regulations on data centers and customers’ willingness to adopt new technologies.

“In China, the government is building massive data centers. In India, there are massive data centers being built. Even in Singapore, a country where land is so scarce, we are seeing many big centers being built. [This is because Singapore] is free from natural disasters and our power quality is very stable,” Chi Sen said.

Government regulation is also an important driving force for DCIM adoption across APAC.

”We are seeing a lot of new green initiatives launched by the governments in this region, ranging from carbon emission tax to [other regulations]. Those initiatives and regulatory requirements are driving the need for using software to manage data centers,”Chi Sen said.

And the region’s adoption of virtualization also helps.

”Virtualization is a very huge technology in Asia Pacific. Every customer I have spoken to has virtualization. Customers today are not just managing physical servers but also virtual servers,”Chi Sen said.

Schneider Electric is working with local partners to build out its DCIM business in APAC.

In China, for example, Chi Sen said Schneider Electric has a strong partner program and is working with one large software provider to distribute its DCIM product StruxureWare.

”China is such a huge market, we just cannot manage all the customers alone. We want to work with partners,”Chi Sen said.